The Ram Rebellion(117)

Cliff Priest looked back at his two lieutenants. Special assistants. Ex-students. Whatever you wanted to call them. He had coached both of them when they were in high school and he was a brand-new hire. All three of them had gone into Grantville's military when Mike Stearns called for volunteers right after the Ring of Fire. Cliff had a B.S. in physical education. The closest he had ever been to a military organization before that was the Grantville Volunteer Fire Department. Walt Miller and Matt Trelli were both in their mid-twenties, ten years or so younger than himself. They had never been in the military before the Ring of Fire, either. Walt had been working at the waste water treatment plant, a job he got courtesy of his grandfather who had retired from the staff there, trying to save money for college now that he had gotten engaged to Amy Jo Prickett and finally made up his mind to settle down. Matt had been in his second year of college at Fairmont State, going part time and working part time for Dave Marcantonio. He was dating Julie Anne Abruzzo; they had graduated the same year but she had gotten a year ahead of him at State by taking more classes. She'd been going part time, too, though; full-time college cost more than most Grantville kids could think about. Cliff spared a thought for his wife Sarah and their three children back in Grantville. She was working as office manager for the Congress of the fragile innovation they called the New United States. Then he brought his mind back to the matter immediately at hand.





From the viewpoint of a professional army, they were babes in the woods, all three of them, even now, eighteen months after they first volunteered. But he was a military administrator, the other two were officers, and the three of them had to think about how to handle one hundred seventy fortified castles. Give or take a few.





Matt cleared his throat. "There's something else. Something that the king of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus—that is, the Captain General—apparently sort of forgot to mention to Mike Stearns when he wished this job off on us."





Cliff raised his eyebrows.





Matt continued. "When the Swedes came through here, they did a kind of Blitzkrieg. If they ran into a town they could take, they took it. That's why we're sitting here in Bamberg. It's the capital of the prince-bishopric, but it isn't fortified. The city council takes the precaution of surrendering to every army that comes along, in hopes that they'll be able to come up with a high enough payment to minimize the destruction and plundering that go with being conquered in this wonderful century. The Swedes simply sort of gave it to us."





And then, Cliff thought, pulled their army back north. So that Grantville was trying to police what used to be the prince-bishopric of Bamberg with a couple of hundred soldiers. Five of them uptimers, which included the medic, a newly trained EMT. Who had, luckily, Bennett Norris' wife Marion to help him full-time, even though she wasn't officially on the payroll. She'd gone back to school after the Ring of Fire and qualified as a certified nursing assistant, a CNA. The rest of the N.U.S. military in Bamberg were down-timers, cobbled together from the various mercenary troops who had surrendered to Grantville since the spring of 1631.





"But," he said. "Something else what."





"It apparently slipped his mind that the bishop had two honking big fortresses that the Swedes didn't bother to take. One of them's north of here, called Kronach. The other one's south, called Forchheim. Forchheim has an imperial garrison in it, still. They haven't tried to come out; waiting to see what happens next, I expect. Kronach is something else again."





"How?"





"The fortress there is called the Rosenberg and it's defended by its own people. The city militia. Two thousand or so of them. Stubborn as hell. It's never, ever, been taken—not by anybody who attacked it. They have a history of making war, sort of independently, on the independent Protestant noblemen in the region."





"Well," Cliff said. "Charmed, I'm sure. It occurs to me that it would be nice, really nice, if Grantville would send us just one uptimer who has some actual military training. Too bad they put Guy Hinshaw on some kind of detached duty. He was actually stationed here when he was in. He might have had some ideas for us."





Matt frowned. "Ask them for Tom O'Brien. He was in the National Guard, at least. And before the Ring of Fire, he worked for a construction company." He grinned suddenly. "In the demolition end of things. Clearing out old stuff to make room to build new stuff. In lower management, not doing the demolition on the sites, but still . . . he's probably the best that we have. If we can get him."